Stay Catholic at a Non-Catholic University

In his address to youth at World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002, Pope John Paul the Great said, "Dear young people, let yourselves be taken over by the light of Christ, and spread that light wherever you are."

Young Catholics at universities throughout the country extend this light by answering questions concerning the Catholic faith in Protestant and secular environments. Students from Baylor, Duke, Texas A&M and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) explained to the Register how they keep the faith in college.

At Duke University, just-graduated senior Amy Wigger said that faith was her priority, especially attending Sunday Mass. She tried to attend one daily Mass per week, maintained a daily prayer life and used resources the Duke Catholic Center had to offer.

"Making friends in the Catholic Center has proven an invaluable resource for my faith," said Wigger. "Having friends with whom to discuss my faith allowed me to grow in faith and holiness, in ways that have been both unexpected and beautiful."

Wigger added that peers regularly challenged her faith, but she considered these encounters as growing opportunities.

"Instead of looking at this as a bad thing, I try to welcome such challenges as opportunities to engage with my faith in a constructive manner," said Wigger. "It forces me to take my faith seriously and spend time learning how to defend it."

Marcel LeJeune, assistant director of campus ministry at Texas A&M, said the greatest test of faith he sees is the culture’s attack on young people.

"Our youth are taught relativism and utilitarianism on a broad scale," said LeJeune. "Too many Catholic leaders and parents let the culture have the upper hand. We need a renewal of evangelization and formation of disciples in our families and parishes."

St. Mary’s Catholic Center at Texas A&M in College Station is home to one of the largest campus ministries in the country. Several students from St. Mary’s explained how they remain strong in faith at a public university.

"Prayer is central to our lives as Catholics and must form the center of any spirituality," he said.

Menendez stressed that the Catholic community at St. Mary’s helped keep him grounded.

"Having a vibrant community challenged and encouraged me to continually seek after holiness in everything that I do," he added.

Katie Smith, also a new graduate of Texas A&M, said her greatest challenge occurred when the faith was rejected or frowned upon in the classroom.

"If my faith was challenged in the classroom, occasionally I raised my hand and spoke about my own beliefs," said Smith. "However, if the professor did not always welcome the Catholic opinion, I remained silent and looked up the Catholic teachings that were challenged in order to reinforce my own beliefs."

Father Paul Rospond, campus minister at UCLA, said many students discover they are in an atmosphere where faith is not taken for granted. He said the ultimate challenge is developing a deeper understanding of the Catholic faith and learning to be a witness in a secular environment.

"Through our preaching, spiritual direction and mentoring, we campus ministers have the amazing opportunity to address a word of faith to our young adults as they discern who they are, what they believe and how to grow in relationship with friends, family and God," said Father Rospond.

Kaitlin Collins, a M.A./Ph.D. student in Hispanic linguistics at UCLA, is a student leader at the University Catholic Center. She said ignorance is the greatest trial she faces, but she also considers it as an opportunity to grow in faith.

"I am proud of my faith and where I come from; it’s just hard because I feel as if I am always explaining myself," said Collins. "If someone stumps me with a question or accusation about the faith, it is ample opportunity for investigation."

Father Daniel Liu, chaplain and director at St. Peter’s Catholic Student Center at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, said students at the Protestant university face many of the same challenges as those at secular universities.

"Alcohol, drugs and sex are all common temptations here, as anywhere else. There are also the academic and social pressures," said Father Liu.

Father Liu said students are tempted to join Protestant ministries but blessed because they are welcome to speak of God openly.

Meredith Hale, who just completed her junior year at Baylor, said the Christian atmosphere strengthens her faith.

"I enjoy being able to interact with Christians of all different denominations and share our common faith in the Trinity," said Hale. "Learning about our differences and choosing that fullness of truth for me, in communion with the Catholic Church, wouldn’t be the same anywhere else."

Alex Scheibner, who just earned a master’s degree from Baylor, converted to Catholicism in college. He said his faith is challenged by his peers, but almost always in a charitable and loving fashion.

"This provides an excellent opportunity to educate our Protestant brothers and sisters about the Catholic faith and challenge them to re-examine what they believe about Catholicism," said Scheibner. "As one who converted to Catholicism during college and coming from a Protestant background, I can attest to God’s ability to use Catholic students for his glory."

In terms of encouraging those struggling with faith in college, he suggests that students examine the sources of meaning and purpose in their lives.

"I am confident that they will discover the emptiness and lack of fulfillment found in a life focused on secular achievement," said Scheibner. "Growing to love and be loved by God, and allowing that love to spill into all other areas of life, is the only path to true happiness and fulfillment in life. It may be difficult to accept at times, but God really is the only thing in our lives that is forever."

Matt Swaim, producer of EWTN Radio’s Son Rise Morning Show and co-author of the new publication Your College Faith: Own It!, also encouraged students to keep their faith strong.

"Stay connected with the sacraments. Read books that ground you. Find someone older than you who has asked the same hard questions you have and still came to the conclusion that the Church is the sanest place to be," said Swaim. "If you use this time as an opportunity for radical personal growth, you’ll look back on your college years with increasing gratitude as you progress in your adult life."

Comments

Again, for those commenting, this article is about staying Catholic at a non-Catholic university. As for staying Catholic at a Catholic—or “Catholic”—university, many of the same things this article mentioned apply: namely, that wherever you are, see challenges as opportunities to know and grow in your faith. Some of the above are even true when you know that your own family isn’t very practicing, or if your spouse’s family aren’t particularly. Enough Catholics have found themselves needing to defend the Catholic faith in their own families, and let’s not pretend it doesn’t happen when Catholics often thoughtlessly pick up what the larger culture throws down. So, if I may, some suggestions that I hope will be helpful:
.“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” If you need a quick refresher, go to resources like YouCat and Catholicism for Dummies for the basics. Simply because one goes to Mass every Sunday and went to a Catholic high school and have Catholic parents does not mean that one is a strong Catholic, or an active Catholic at all. Your relationship with God will be different from other people’s, even as it is lived in Communion with both Christ and them. It’s your own responsibility and adventure. Three other books I would recommend, particularly to Catholics at a non-Catholic university and Catholics at a more secularized Catholic university, are Peter Seewald’s three book-length interviews with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI: Salt of the Earth, God and the World, and Light of the World. Seewald doesn’t skimp on the hard questions, and Ratzinger rises to the occasion. Seewald began the interviews an agnostic, non-practicing Catholic and ended them a practicing Catholic. For a sort of primer on fashionable ideologies that challenge the Catholic faith, but which the Catholic faith is able to confront and to engage while hitting hard is Dis-Orientation: How to go to College without Losing Your Mind.
.“Be still and know that I am God”/“You shall be holy, for I am holy.” In all things, be patient. Be careful of the danger of burning yourself out. Know first and foremost that it’s about love, which is not a feeling, but an act of the will that wills the best for the other as other. Know that you can’t be holy all on your own; to be Catholic is allowing God to help you be holy. Oh, and by the way, all of the “hard teachings” that everybody says are “unreasonable” and that they “don’t like”? Jesus will enable you to live them. That’s why you don’t want to receive the Eucharist unworthily. Ever. Because…
. “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”Always maintain an active prayer life, and frequent the Sacraments: Your faith is your first line of defense, and the Sacraments and prayer are your lifeline; they’re meant to ground you. Let them help you, and take things bit by bit. Practice the virtues, but don’t expect them to happen overnight. This is what’s meant by “built up and rooted in Jesus Christ, firm in the faith.” Have a go-to devotion, and allow it to keep you centered—the Rosary and Divine Mercy chaplet are good ones: I especially recommend the Rosary, because it’s to ask to love Christ with the faith of Mary. Also, to think with Mary is to think with the Church. I know that even many of the “good Catholic kids” who go to Mass every Sunday don’t go to Confession frequently. That’s just asking for trouble.
.“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God”/“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” The Eucharist is the Source and Summit of the Christian Life, and conforms all of us, to the very depths of our being, more closely to Christ. It will not be effective without regular prayer and Confession, and if you receive the Eucharist unworthily, you risk cutting yourself off from Christ to the point that you won’t even know Him, especially if you heap mortal sin upon mortal sin. To enable yourself to see the world as a Catholic is to see not only with the intellect, but also the heart and the soul. To go to Confession doesn’t just “clean the slate,” but it enables the heart to see again.
.“Lord, I want to see!” Fr. James V. Schall, SJ recently said upon his retirement that an education is most often about whether or not an individual has his or her soul in order. One will not see great things unless one’s soul is in order. So don’t separate out your faith from the rest of your life. All parts of your life are meant to be integrated. God gave all of it to you, after all. That’s what your faith is meant to do, and it’s what “finding your identity in Jesus Christ” means. It’s also necessary to see and read the Bible and Catholic theology with the eyes of faith. The Bible, for one, is not self-interpreting, and not the sole rule of faith—even the Bible refutes Sola Scriptura.
.Fides et Ratio. The Catholic tradition, Fr. Robert Barron points out repeatedly, is a faith-and-reason tradition. It’s a smart tradition, and does not, like the culture, pit faith and reason against each other. Rather, they are both meant to be better custodians of the other. Catholicism is logical and coherent, and it expects you to use your God-given reason and to think. In the Catholic faith, it’s not a matter of whether religious believers are meant to think or not, but what one thinks with. Moreover, when you study, keep the Nicene Creed in mind, which sums up everything we believe. Unpack it (in fact, the Rosary unpacks it rather well). If you’ve ever had to defend the Catholic faith in your own family or at a Catholic university that’s barely Catholic anymore, then you also know that obedience—thinking assent, not blind obedience—to the Pope and the Magisterium are not only crucial, but essential. Here again, don’t be afraid: let them help you. Dogma and doctrine are not antithetical to friendship with Christ, don’t prevent you from thinking, and aren’t mere “cookie-cutter rules”: we have them because in order to have a relationship or friendship with Christ, we need to know Who He Is. And the Pope always knows Who He Is. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jona,” indeed.
.“Be not afraid.” Know that it’s okay to question, because it’s how we come to know God and our faith better. In this culture of ours that claims to “question authority,” there’s questioning authority, and then there’s questioning authority. Oftentimes, this is disingenuous: it is, after all, intellectually dishonest to say that you question all authority without ever questioning your own. But there’s a way to do it sincerely: by all means, ask someone more knowledgeable than you, and actually study the faith, as you must—Bible, Catechism, Spiritual Reading. But seriously—ask God. Offer up your questions in prayer also. Ask God your questions in humility and in curiosity, and the answers will come—some of them will come quickly, and some will unfold over time. Take your questions to Eucharistic Adoration, and don’t be afraid to ask Mary to help you: pray as you study; it’ll help you join the dots of the faith. If you frequent the Sacraments and have an active prayer life as you study, you will find that when you study something like the Catechism, you will be able to anticipate a lot of what’s coming if you put the Eucharist first. It is more than okay to pray “Lord, I don’t get it. Please help!” which is essentially another way of praying, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
.“Live in My Love.” Pope Emeritus Benedict always stressed friendship with Jesus Christ, because God is a person. St. Thomas Aquinas said that God is Being Itself. Now, if God is Being Itself, He not only welcomes your questions, but can take your questions. But knowledge of the faith—of what the Church teaches and why comes also with participation in that relationship with Christ through the Sacraments, prayer, and study. It all fits together, and the more you participate in and live in that relationship, the more grounded you will be. St. Anselm of Canterbury once said, “I believe so that I may understand”—something recently echoed by Pope Benedict and Pope Francis in “Lumen Fidei.” Similarly, St. Augustine said that the wages of faith is understanding. The modern world has this exactly backwards, thinking that it can understand God without belief in Him, when to understand Him is to want to know and love Him on His own terms; to let Him be Himself, whereupon we will become who we truly are, also. “Understanding” by no means boils down to “figuring it all out,” because when it comes to something as intimate and yet transcendent as God, that depth of understanding unfolds over a lifetime. The Catholic faith is smarter than you and bigger than you, because God is just bigger. But that’s actually cause for relief and rejoicing: know that you can go as far and as deep in that relationship as you want to.
.“Ubi Caritas et Amor Deus ibi est.” There are some good Catholic apps for iPhone. One of the really good free ones is Laudate, which has a ton of prayers, an interactive Rosary, links to almost every Papal encyclical at your fingertips, the Bible, and the Liturgy of the Hours. This is where you get to be creative with your prayer life. You might structure your day around the Liturgy of the Hours, for example. Or, you might use the interactive Rosary to pray your way through a task that you know will be difficult, essentially asking the Blessed Mother to walk and talk you through it. The point is that prayer will reorient all of your life slowly, but surely; it will ground you in the rhythm of the Lord, the giver of Life. On YouTube, stick close to Fr. Robert Barron and his Word On Fire ministry, because he knows how to use pop culture to illustrate what Catholics believe and why. For blogs, I would recommend both Catholic World Report and TheCatholicThing.org, as well as Msgr. Charles Pope’s at blog.adw.org.
.“Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart”. Know that ultimately, if you come at it simply because you want to know, love, and serve God better, it’ll start to come together. A lot of the times, you will find yourself making a lot of the connections between different things you’re learning about in the faith while at Mass. Ultimately, you’ll learn to pray the Mass, and not just attend it.

Posted by Casting Crowns on Thursday, Jun 13, 2013 11:09 PM (EST):

I found this topic rather amusing. As a graduate of the oldest Catholic university west of the Mississippi it should be noted they invited Karla LeVey to be a guest speaker. Karla is the High Priestess (and daughter of Anton LeVey) of the church of Satan. You’re probably thinking this is a Jesuit run college. You would be correct.
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On the other hand, my neighbor and his wife are devoted Evangelicals. When a student is planning to leave for college for the first time, their church has established a network with fellow Pastors in the area where the student will be living. He/she will then have a church to connect with and will be among people of like faith. He/she will also have a support system of people, resources and for anything else which might be needed living so far from home. Seems this is what the Body of Christ is suppose to do —be Jesus for other people.

Posted by Robert A.Rowland on Monday, Jun 10, 2013 2:07 PM (EST):

In an age where So-called Catholic colleges seem to be losing their identity, a movement like this seems to parallel for these non-Catholic universities what Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen observed after the Second Vatican Council: If you want your children to lose their faith send them to a Catholic School. If you want them to save their faith send them to a public school. Georgetown, once the oldest Catholic University in America, has lost all semblance to its former stature and has become a scandal. It is not alone in its rejection of our Catholic faith. I certainly agree with John and Andrew.

Posted by JOHN GRONDELSKI on Sunday, Jun 9, 2013 9:59 PM (EST):

As a graduate of a Catholic undergraduate college and a Catholic graduate school, who then taught at two Catholic universities, I sometimes think we need an article: “Staying Catholic at a Catholic University.” :)

Posted by Andrew Eppink on Sunday, Jun 9, 2013 11:38 AM (EST):

“Stay Catholic at a Non-Catholic University”

The caption should read, “Stay Catholic at a ‘Catholic’ University”.

Posted by Michele on Sunday, Jun 9, 2013 11:28 AM (EST):

The biggest problem with staying Catholic in any university setting is the fact that many kids are encouraged to “branch out” and “start over” by high school teachers, parents, other kids, etc. In a sense, they are telling kids to abandon their pre-18 year old lives. This message is rampant at college orientations, and to a certain extent in high school talk before they leave. Getting the kids to the Newman Centers on a college campus is the hardest part. The kids are well aware that “good Catholic kids” are seen as immature since they accept what their parents/families have taught them as true. The kids are seen as social outcasts due to the culture. So besides solid catechisis in the teen years, we need to make sure our churches/Catholic schools are rich in experience of Christ in relationship. This will require improved catichisis for parents by priests and Catholic leaders, and for Catholic grammar and high schools to support domestic church as well as educational excellence.

Posted by ANNE on Sunday, Jun 9, 2013 6:12 AM (EST):

Errors are taught in some “Catholic” Universities as well.
Make certain ALL 17 year olds have read the Bible, and the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition” prior to leaving for ANY College.
If they do not accurately “know” their Faith in total, they may not be able to combat relativism, heresy, schism, secularism, and the scandal that abounds within the Church.
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“In this Year of Faith let us ask ourselves if we have actually taken a few steps to get to know Christ and the truths of faith more, by reading and meditating on the Scriptures, studying the Catechism, steadily approaching the Sacraments.” - Pope Francis, May 15, 2013.
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“ The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I approved ... and the publication of which I today order by virtue of my Apostolic Authority, is a statement of the Church’s faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium.
I declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion. “ – Pope John Paul II. (CCC pg 5)

Posted by Jacqueline Burkepile on Tuesday, Jun 4, 2013 5:15 PM (EST):

Hi Ana, the purpose of the article is to focus on non-Catholic universities. All of your points are valid, but in public and non-Catholic Christian universities, the Catholic faith is not a factor at all, unless a particular Catholic Campus group is formed by an outside source. This is why the article focuses on universities that do not initially have the Catholic faith on campus.

Posted by Ana M Simmons on Monday, Jun 3, 2013 10:09 PM (EST):

What about how to remain Catholic in our so called “Catholics Universities”? Is it Right for a Catholic U. to invite pro-abortion leaders to speak at the commencement ceremonies? Is it right for a catholic U. to have prohomosexual clubs in campus…etc, etc, etc?

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